


Little Stolen Things

by Chamerion



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst, Gen, The Thalmor Suck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chamerion/pseuds/Chamerion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many self-evident reasons to loathe the Thalmor. But there are many personal ones, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tullius

Mattias Tiberius Tullius was born in the Market District of the Imperial City, the second son of a baker, neither rich nor poor - but very smart. As a young man he joined the Legion to see the world, and because he was sick of brushing flour dust off of his arms. And he did travel. But he never went to war; instead, he came home to it.  
  
Many Imperial citizens wept with horror to learn that the Dominion had taken the capital. But for Tullius, it was different. It was his home the Dominion sacked, his gleaming fountains and plazas discolored by smoke, little alleys that were the play-haunts of his childhood reduced to rubble. And it was his city that he helped lay siege to, in the end. Long before the signing of the Concordat, from the moment he gave the order to bombard the walls that sheltered him as a boy, Tullius knew that regardless of its outcome, this battle could never be called a victory.  
  
He wants to scream, when the Nords of Skyrim speak of the treaty and call it cowardice. Yes, the legions were brimming with Nords, and they fought as bravely and died as futilely as all the other soldiers. But it was not their towns being burned, their fields being salted, their children lying dead in the streets because some Thalmor officer gave no more thought to cutting down a human child in his path than he would a stray dog. If it were, Tullius does not think they would have been so eager to go on fighting.  
  
Or maybe they would. He doesn't pretend to understand them; there's a lot of talk about how the provinces would descend into barbarism without the Empire, but Tullius never gave much thought to it until he came to Skyrim, where a man can apparently murder his king so long as he follows the proper ritual. Regardless, they are not the true enemy. Ulfric Stormcloak's little rebellion is nothing but a distraction, and it infuriates him that he must spend lives and resources on it while the Dominion crouches in the shadows, waiting. Mocking. Once, while he is poring over reports, he gets an invitation to one of Emissary Elenwen’s lavish little receptions. His reply is curt.  _The Empire sent me here to win a war, not attend parties._ (Tacked on for civility's sake:  _Deepest regrets._ ) He's glad of such an ironclad excuse. He hates that sort of function anyway, but every time he sees that woman he can feel her silently laughing at him.  
  
Tullius hates being laughed at. He hates turning prisoners over to the Dominion anytime they claim jurisdiction, on some trumped-up but unfalsifiable accusation of Talos worship. He hates pretending not to hate them. And most of all he hates the memory of firing catapults on his home in order to save it, like driving a knife into one’s arm to lance a wound: of scorched stone and crumbling towers; of the green earth around Lake Rumare violated beyond recognition, churned into a muddy waste by wheels and marching feet; of hungry civilians cowering in their houses before the flaming missiles of their own invading army.  _One day,_  he thinks. For now his job is to put a stop to this Nord nonsense with Ulfric Stormcloak’s head on a spike, and to be as civil with the Thalmor as he can stand - and Tullius excels at doing his job. But one day, there is going to be a reckoning.  
  
He’s looking forward to it.  



	2. Vilkas

One afternoon – when the dust of the training yard sticks to the sweat on his skin, when one of the dummies hangs disemboweled from its post, when the call of the blood gnaws at his guts as though he is the one with his straw innards fluttering in wisps about the underforge – Ria asks him about the war. He’s not sure why. Perhaps she respects his opinions on politics as well as swordsmanship. Perhaps it’s because she’s a newcomer and an Imperial, and an overwhelming aura of _Nord_ clings to Jorrvaskr like the scents of smoke and mead. It makes Vilkas huff in frustration. The war is stupid, and he has scant patience for stupidity, especially when his skin itches as though he will never sleep again.

“There are always good reasons to fight,” Vilkas says. “I just wish this war had them. Who cares who worships what dead god? Give me something to make me draw my sword.”

Ria looks at him curiously. “What about the Thalmor?”

“Are you even old enough to remember the Great War?”

“No, but—”

“Then keep quiet about it,” Vilkas snaps. “Companions win glory through arms, not politics.”

He’s barely old enough to remember the war himself. Not in detail, anyway – he remembers certain parts clearly enough. He remembers being pressed up against his brother as the citizens of Whiterun lined the streets to farewell their warriors, uniforms flashing in the sun, one of Jergen’s big hands laid on each of their shoulders. The cheers of pride and bloodlust. The way Jergen’s hand tightened unconsciously when the legionnaires marched past, so that Vilkas looked up and saw the man swallow hard. He remembers the sudden absence of certain favorite foods, as the trade from Cyrodiil dried up. He remembers the death-like stillness that fell in town after the courier arrived with news that the Imperial City had fallen. And he remembers dashing up onto the walls to watch Jergen stride out the gates with his muscled warrior’s walk, the one he constantly puffed out his chest and tried to mimic: weighted down with his heavy armor, and yet not hampered by it; musclebound, earthbound, as though Skyrim’s stones themselves had stood for some inexorable purpose. He was visible for a long time, striding across the plains, till he rounded the meadery walls and passed out of sight. Vilkas doesn’t remember him looking back.

 _Our father,_ Farkas called him. Still calls him. Vilkas isn't sure if he really believes it, or if he is simply content to use the nearest name. He envies his brother that. Even at five he understood what it meant to be a foundling. To be unwanted.

He understood abandonment, too, especially after the man who was not their father came home in a casket. He remembers being irrationally angry that they would not let him look inside. He remembers the flames of the Skyforge clawing towards the sky. Farkas cried; it's one of the few times Vilkas can recall wanting to hit his brother. He remembers a solemn Kodlak laying a hand on his scrawny shoulder. _What do I care?_ he had snarled, before yet another person could express condolences. _He wasn't my father anyway._

The other members of the Circle whisper about the wolf blood, the way some take to it more than others. The way it makes a man’s temper burn hotter. But Vilkas knows – with a grim certainty that he fears to put into words, lest he confirm it absolutely – that they are wrong. It is not the wolf inside that makes his human passions more feral. It is the human passions – despair, desire, simmering hatred – that make the wolf so dangerous. And none is more woven into the roots of his human soul than the hate like black and raging love he feels for Jergen. He hates him for promising to look after them, always. He hates him for lying, for leaving, for loving war more than he loved the children that were not his children. _Maybe, just maybe,_ Vilkas thinks, once, _he went to war because he wanted his children to be safe_ \- and then he hates himself for thinking it, and Jergen for making him wonder. He hates him for pretending to be something he was not, so well that Vilkas could almost believe him. He hates him for making Farkas cry.

(But far more - caged and pacing like the wolf, unacknowledged, always there - he hates the Thalmor bastards who took him from them.)


	3. Balgruuf

“Have you lost all _SENSE_?” his voice reverberates high in the rafters of Dragonsreach, so incensed is he. Dust motes drift down into the hall. Balgruuf spots Nelkir craning his neck to listen from where he lurks in the upper balcony, and still cannot be bothered to lower his voice. “We are short on guards as it as! If we lose half our men, the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild will have the run of the city. The Stormcloaks will be the least of our worries!”

“Just for a few days,” insists his brother, earnest-eyed behind the fearsome warpaint. “If we send half our guards to aid the Legions, it could tip the scales in the Empire’s favor. The Companions could help protect the city, and the Emperor would be in our—”

“The answer is no, I tell you! I won’t leave Whiterun defenseless, even for a day. Now stop pestering me with your war-mongering!”

Hurt flickers on the other man’s face. For a moment, Hrongar looks like nothing so much as his own younger self, ordered back to the nursery while his elder siblings trained at swordplay. Then he turns sullen. “The war will come to Whiterun eventually. And when it does, your wavering will do nothing but make us weak.”

Balgruuf’s tone is sharp. “Inaction is not indecision. If you had been to war, you would know that.”

The younger man is too proud to recoil, but Balgruuf sees him stiffen. “I’ll leave you to your counselors, then, brother,” he says. “May they aid you in buying safety.” The contemptuous look he casts in Avenicci’s direction as he stalks out is eloquent. Balgruuf watches him go, candlelight winking on his scaled armor and gleaming on his scalp – Hrongar keeps his head shorn, lest anyone grab his hair in battle. Just as he always keeps his greatsword with him. His brother is the very image of a Nord warrior.

His anger deserts him with the deep rush of breath from his lungs. The jarl’s head thunks back against his throne as he blinks, defeated. Numinex’s yellowing jawbone hovers above him like some prophecy of doom. Balgruuf is left staring up at the dragon’s gaping maw, wondering at the efficiency with which two grown men can carve their kin to pieces.

Things were not always thus. His brother, late-born, was gleefully spoiled as a child, even by his siblings. Balgruuf cajoled and wheedled with their weapons-master to allow Hrongar to watch practice sessions, though he was yet too young to train with a sword himself. Dagny, their elder sister, read him tales of their famous forebear Olaf and of his battle with a dragon atop Mount Anthor. She would pitch her voice low and menacing at the climactic moment, and tip her finger up towards the skull above the throne.

As with their early childhood sparring sessions, his age fated Hrongar to miss the Great War. Not so his siblings. It will always stand between them: the jagged gulf between the glory his brother wanted and the nightmare Balgruuf got. Maybe, if Dagny had lived, it would have been different. But Balgruuf came home bearing the coffin of his sister on his lanky shoulders. Came home to an ailing father and an angry brother and a responsibility he had always envied and never truly contemplated, and spilled his grief in ink and burnt-out candle tallow while his brother hacked up targets in the yard.

Nearly thirty years later, here they are, both with their bastard children and their long work hours, loving each other well enough to know exactly how to wound each other. Hrongar longs to bloody his blade in defense of what is his. Balgruuf knows that steel and strength are not always enough, and he shores up Whiterun’s walls with crops and crafts and the good will of his neighbors. He was never meant to be a jarl. He was the peacemaker, between his brother’s fiery temper and his sister’s unyielding pride. Even now, he falls into that role. Balgruuf is a man who has been cursed with a fair mind. A fair mind, and the fierce, hot-burning passions of one of Skyrim’s true sons. It’s a cruel combination for the time he lives in. Some days, it feels as though the civil war is playing itself out on the thoroughly Nordic terrain of his very heart. His enemies accuse him of growing rich from the war, and he does not deny it. Neutrality is profitable; in the midst of so much suffering, Whiterun prospers. Balgruuf has known war and deprivation. There is no glory in it. He is not Ulfric Stormcloak, to break his own fists on a wall just to prove how he despises being locked in.

But behind those walls, Balgruuf prays. Not to Zenithar for industry, or Mara for mercy, nor even Stendarr for justice. And if he keeps a keen eye on the coin in his coffers, then he also knows the _weregild_ he is owed – to the last golden drop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I hope the rest of it is recognizably distinct, I’m afraid my headcanon Balgruuf has been permanently shaped by Morninglight’s idea that he was originally second in line for Whiterun’s throne. _Of course_ he’s the peacemaking middle child. 
> 
> I have been trying to keep these quite short because I like the challenge of packing a lot of emotion into a small space, but Balgruuf gave me trouble (and Hrongar kept butting in). I’m fascinated by the contrast between the way he rules his hold and the dysfunction in his family, Mephala notwithstanding. And I am still not quite happy with this, but there you go.


	4. Wuunferth

 

One night, in the winter of 183, an uncommonly brave soul shakes him awake.

Wuunferth may be old, but his snarl is far from toothless, especially on being dragged from a sound sleep. Galmar certainly doesn’t cower, but after a moment he does take a grudging step back. The big man’s sandy hair is straying in every direction, his nightclothes askew. He looks like nothing so much as a child trying to drag his elder brother into some midnight mischief, and is treated accordingly. “What do you want?” Wuunferth asks, menacing.

The warrior crosses his arms before his chest. “The Jarl needs you,” he barks, voice harsh with sleep. And then he strides out, with the sort of audacious presumption that only the young housecarl of a new ruler can manage.

The phrasing of the non-request, however, has Wuunferth throwing back the quilts, sliding his feet into a pair of slippers with a grumbled curse for the chill stone floors. _The Jarl_. Not his old friend Valbjorn but Valbjorn’s bristling, brooding, bruised-eyed son, scarcely two months out of a Markarth dungeon. _Look after him_ , Valbjorn had insisted, clutching at his hand with a warrior’s strength that made it hard to credit he was dying. It does not seem as if two years have passed.

Ulfric is lounging in a chair with heavy-lidded eyes, nursing a bottle of mead. He looks so coolly awake that it takes Wuunferth a moment to register his right hand, curled loosely atop the table, crooked, swollen knuckles oozing dark blood onto the wood. The wizard blinks. Droplets form a trail along the floor between the table and the wardrobe. Which is short an intact door. “It seems I’m in need of a healer,” Ulfric drawls. For all his lazy aplomb, his voice is tight with pain.

“It seems so,” Wuunferth says. He has to pull splinters from the man’s knuckles before he can set the bones. He doesn’t ask what made the jarl angry enough to put his fist through an oaken cabinet. It probably doesn’t matter. Even as a boy Ulfric had a fiery temper; these days it is less predictable, and more darkly dangerous for it. His father had the same fierce temperament, but once kindled his anger burned hot and clean. Ulfric’s rage is a smoldering one – and although Wuunferth has looked many dark things in the eye over his long life, he is wary when it comes to his liege lord.

He does fancy, though, that he can guess at the root of it. When golden light begins to fill his cupped palms Ulfric spasms in his seat and Galmar, hovering at his shoulder, makes an aborted movement. Wuunferth knows enough of magic – and of the world – to know its misuses. Twisting Restoration to serve cruel purposes is as old and widespread as it is perverse. And Ulfric was missing in action for a very long time, during the war. He lowers his hands.

“Potion,” Galmar grunts, into the silence. The jarl’s pulse is hammering visibly in his throat.

“You might have mentioned that,” Wuunferth snaps.

When he returns with a bottle of healer’s draught Galmar is gone. Ulfric takes the potion without sparing him a glance. “If you need something else—” Wuunferth says.

“What,” Ulfric interrupts, harshly, “makes you think I need anything from you?”

_I am your father’s oldest friend_ , he wants to say. Wuunferth was there alongside Valbjorn every step of the way, drafting letters, leveraging old alliances, outright threatening war to keep the heir to Eastmarch safe and get him home. _And I made him a promise._

And yet he already senses it is a promise that he will not be able to keep. Valbjorn’s son does not want looking after, least of all by a wizard who has seen him flinch from a flaring palm. A blazing beat of hatred throbs behind his eyes, for whichever goldskinned sorcerer made a liar of him as he knelt by his best friend’s deathbed and clasped his hand.

Wuunferth exhales. “My Jarl,” he says, deferential, and bows out.


	5. Delphine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This installment finally garnered the “graphic depictions of violence” tag. Quite brief ones, but _caveat lector_.

The first time she kills to protect her identity, it’s an accident.

Delphine was twenty-three years old when a chance reassignment saved her from being one more head rolling across the floor at the Emperor’s feet. Saved her by a margin of weeks – she worked out the timeline once, in a grim fit of self-destructive curiosity. By the time she made it back to Cloud Ruler Temple her handler in Valenwood had already been flayed and staked out on the jungle floor for the carrion beetles. It was quicker than it could have been; they cut off the poor bastard’s head before his facial features could be rendered indistinct.

Four years later Cloud Ruler fell, but she can never summon the energy to hate Titus Mede. By that time betrayal was so familiar as to taste dull, and what illusions she’d ever had were rotting like so many leaves in the humus of the Grahtwood. Delphine is the granddaughter to a Breton power broker who fled High Rock half a breath ahead of one intrigue too many, the daughter to a pair of career legionnaires who ran their family the way they ran their units. She has never been a romantic, but she was still susceptible to the romance of covert bladework in a foreign land. Maybe just to the novelty of travel. Falinesti is a cosmopolitan city by Valenwood standards, but at times it still seemed utterly alien as only the darkest swamps of Black Marsh could ever hope to match. She thrilled to the challenge of navigating its boughs and keeping an eye on its politics while maintaining her cover as a rather witless lumber importer.

Maybe she felt a bit superior to her neighbors, with all her secrets. But she also grew to love them. She loved to watch their dancing, intricate as any of her grandfather’s court reels but thrice as wild. She loved the fecund scent of the jungle. She loved the cool sour froth of Jagga, and gossiping with the innkeeper under the glow of the phosphorescent molds lighting his tavern. When she entered Valenwood she spoke Bosmeris with blunt proficiency and deemed further study pointless – and yet when a year was up she’d acquired a nearly-native grace that she was proud of, that she had struggled for. When she was recalled to Cyrodiil she was furious, and irate with herself for her sentimentality. Mere weeks later the Thalmor tortured and beheaded every one of her superiors and fellow agents. That is the betrayal that stings: having her hard-won sense of belonging in a strange land ripped out from beneath her, and wondering if it was ever there to begin with.

And so after the war, after the third assassination attempt, after most of her colleagues have been executed and the remainder scattered, she finds herself behind a stable in the Colovian Highlands contemplating the katana in her hands and the rushing mountain stream where she might discard it. Someone taps her on the shoulder, and in one instinctive movement she draws the damning evidence and cleaves halfway through the chest of her attacker before she’s completed a turn. The ostler’s son is scarcely younger than she is. But to her eyes – traveled, war-weary, hunted – he looks like a boy. She gets back on her horse and rides into the dusk before they discover the body.

He is not the last casualty of the manhunt that she ultimately evades. Delphine manipulates a mutiny amongst the skooma-smuggling gang that guides her over the Jeralls, and cuts the throat of a Riften footpad who may well be a simple cutpurse but shadows her steps too persistently for comfort. Dumping his body in the canal does not prick at her conscience. Not after the incident in Chorrol, where she stumbles across one of her fellow fugitive Blades roasting alive in the town square under the smug and watchful gaze of a dozen justiciars. Decimus Atrius is his name – an occasional sparring partner, a casual friend. Delphine meets his eyes briefly and then melts into the crowd without looking back.

Years later, in the safest place either of them have known in decades, Esbern toys with the idea of writing the history that no one else is left alive to chronicle. “What would you like your entry to say?” he asks her.

 _The recent history of the Blades?_ Delphine thinks, incredulous. She could detail it in a few words. _Politicked ourselves to death, only we didn’t know it until the Thalmor came in to finish the job_. The “recent history of the Blades” consists of the majority of them being tortured to death and the remainder being hunted down like dogs. She can’t imagine it would make for pleasant reading. Or even interesting reading, come to that. Once you’ve seen a few flayings or crucifixions or impalements, you’ve seen them all, really.

“I survived,” she tells him. It feels like a hollow answer.

 


End file.
